The Reflections Of Our Tears

Part Two

Oliver.

-

That night was the night I had discovered that dreams can come true.  Sure, the family wasn't mine.  Hell, they weren't even close.  But it was what I had always wanted.  I would be forever grateful to Isabella for what she did for me that night.

After dinner (during which I ate half the table), we sat on the floor around the fireplace and told stories until the younger kids fell asleep; jazzy, instrumental Christmas music playing softly in the background.

I mostly kept quiet, just listening to the family laugh and joke and smile and be happy.  It made me feel something I don't think I'd ever experienced before that.  I was genuinely happy.  I was content.  Until—

“Oliver, right?" said Mr.  Jett.  I nodded.  “What's your last name?”

Uh oh, I thought.  Speaking hesitantly I said, “Bronx.”

I swore you could have heard a pin drop after I said that.  I knew why, too.  My mom was the town drunk.  My family was the town’s main cause for gossip.  There wasn't a single person in this town that respected my family.

“As in Maggie Bronx?” a relative asked nonchalantly.

I swallowed hard and nodded.  “She’s my mother,” I tried to say, though it came out as nothing more than a hoarse, ashamed whisper. 

Everyone got real quiet after that, afraid to say the wrong thing and make me cry or send me on a son-of-an-alcoholic’s mad rage.  I looked over at Isabella, who was staring into the fireplace.  She looked like she was thinking hard.  All night I noticed that she hadn’t stopped smiling.  By the end of dinner, it had almost seemed forced.  Now, though, when she thought no one was watching, I could see it in her eyes.  It wasn’t a darkness, it was more…the absence of light.  The flames casting their reflection on her eyes seemed to open the gate to the Hell I was sure she’d gone through and invite me in. 

I was drawn to this girl in a strange and scary way.  I wanted to know everything about her.  I wanted her to let me in.  Not into the life of the girl with the smiling façade, but the real her.  The one with the Hell-reflecting eyes.  The one she kept hidden.

Isabella.

-

That Christmas came and passed as they all did, but there was one thing about it that didn’t, and that was my sheer fascination with Oliver Bronx.  My life, aside from a few things, had always been ordinary.  Ordinary school, ordinary clothes, ordinary friends, ordinary family.  Ordinary meant boring to me.  Oliver had this mysteriously dark life.  It was like a good book—it made me desperately want to know more.

The next week was back to regular routine for me.  This meant a whole lot of medication shoved down my throat, an hour or two of being shut in my room to read a self-help book that didn’t self-help, and spending an hour with my therapist.  Her name was Deborah but I called her Debbie or Debs, solely because it bothered her.

I’d been seeing Debs for almost six months now, and she was almost family to me.

Almost.

“Hey Debs,” I said.  “Guess what?  I met a boy!”

And how does that make you feeeel, I imagined her saying.  It cracked me up every time.  “Really, Isabella?  And how did that make you feel?” I snickered, on account of her words matching my thoughts.  Quickly, though, therapy was back to its typical sombreness as I told her how it really did make me feel.